1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a technology for supporting an operator to respond to an inquiry.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the manufacturers' industry, an organization referred to as “call center” is provided to receive and respond to customers' inquiries about products. In the call center, operators respond to customers' inquiries.
The customers who inquire of operators in the call center differ in knowledge level. The knowledge level (hereinafter, “customer level”) means the level of knowledge about a product or a service for which each customer makes an inquiry. Because of the difference in customer level, each operator is forced to flexibly respond to a customer's inquiry based on operator's knowledge and experience. For example, the operator estimates the customer level and needs to be politic in responding to the customer's inquiry according to the customer level.
In recent years, the following problems have occurred in the call center. The job separation rate at which operators separate from their jobs in one year is as high as 20% to 30%. Furthermore, it takes every operator more than one year to become full-fledged. For these reasons, most of the operators on duty are new or inexperienced. It is difficult for the new or inexperienced operator to flexibly respond to inquiries of customers at various customer levels. However, unless operators appropriately respond to customers' inquiries whether they are experienced or inexperienced, customer satisfaction disadvantageously falls and the efficiency of operation for responding to customers' inquiries in the call center is disadvantageously deteriorated.
Considering them, techniques for supporting operator have been proposed. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-224661 discloses an electronic-information providing method. According to the conventional electronic-information providing method, an electronic manual to which an operator is to refer in response to a customer's inquiry, a correspondence table in which information disclosure levels are made to correspond to combinations of customer levels and proficiencies of operators, and a rule for editing the electronic manual based on each of the information disclosure levels are stored. Keywords are extracted by performing a voice recognition process on an actual dialogs between the customer and the operator. The electronic manuals are narrowed down based on the extracted keywords, and the customer level of a customer is determined. The available information disclosure level is determined based on the determined customer level and the proficiency of the operator to respond to the customer's inquiry. The electronic manual thus narrowed down is edited according to the rule based on the information disclosure level, and the resultant electronic manual is displayed to the operator.
As another example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-355108 discloses an operator supporting program. With the conventional operator supporting program, a response to each customer's inquiry is made to correspond to a combination of keywords and a plurality of responses to the inquiry are prepared according to customer levels. The responses are stored in a response content database (DB). A keyword is extracted from an actual dialog between the customer and the operator by a voice recognition process. Responses corresponding to a combination of keywords are extracted from the response content DB. Further, a response content corresponding to the customer level and determined based on the combination of keywords is displayed to the operator.
According to the conventional techniques, sample responses are prepared according to the customer levels. However, it is still up to each operator as to how to use an expression for the response exceeding what are shown in the sample responses. As a result, sample responses for making an appropriate response according to each customer level are not always provided.
Furthermore, it is necessary to manually input rules and data for creating sample responses finally displayed to each operator. Because of the vast number, of sample responses to customers' inquiries about ordinary products, the need to create sample responses to inquiries about a new product when the new product is manufacture, and the like, it is disadvantageously difficult to realize appropriate responses according to customer levels.